In Patent Documents 1 and 2, game devices are known that viewably post the points that players have obtained on the game devices. A server is provided in Patent Documents 1 and 2 that receives the points obtained by a player, then the server adds the received points to point ranking information, and detects points that produce a change in ranking due to being added, then sends a message by email indicating that a change in ranking has occurred to an address that indicates an email address corresponding to the points by which a change in ranking was produced. In this way, there is no need for a player to take the trouble to access the server to confirm rankings, which eliminates cumbersomeness and also achieves reductions in the load on the server.
With Patent Documents 1 and 2, although cumbersomeness is reduced for the player, in a case where a change in ranking has occurred at a higher ranking, all lower ranked players must be sent an email, and in a case where these are to be sent to a large number of tournament participants, in particular such as a game tournament or the like held in a predetermined period, emails must be sent to a large number of players and this has an opposite effect of greatly increasing the load on the server. Moreover, when games are carried out continuously during a tournament, the load on the server is further increased and results in an expansion of the volume of communications.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-376    Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-42253